The planning committee finally approve the criteria for the proposed riparian corridor and has passed this information along to the City Council for their vote on July 7, 2011. Below is a re-cap of what i think happened:
Last fall the Medford Planning Commission was told by the ODFW that 6.9 miles of creeks within the Medford city limits needed to be added to the Riparian Corridor AND that they were increasing the corridor to 50 feet from top of bank instead of the current 25 feet. At that time the Planning Commission was also considering incorporating an additional 12+ miles of other creeks that were not mandated by ODFW. RVAR submitted a letter to let them know we were not opposed to what ODFW was mandating but that we didn't support the additional proposal. When I attended the Planning Commission meeting last month they had approved the original 6.9 mandated by ODFW plus an additional two-tenths of a mile that ODFW had added, but had dropped the proposal for the additional 12+ miles. To my knowledge this 7.1 miles mandated by ODFW is all that will be coming before you on July 7th.
It is also my understanding from the Planning Commission meeting that the city really doesn't have any options in approving this without causing harm to the city's flood insurance coverage and the property owners affected have to take it to ODFW to get the "fish-bearing" status of the stream changed in order to be removed from the corridor. Also, the city charter allows the property owner to request that the "standard" procedure be applied rather than just the "safe harbor" approach and under this even if they can't be removed from the corridor they can get the width of it reduced. At the meeting I was at there were a couple of property owners there who talked about the fact that some of these creeks ODFW has declared "fish-bearing" actually dry up in the summer, but as I said the fight for the property owner is with ODFW, not the City.
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